But in fact the danger of public resentment over such a course has
been the chief cause of the sagacious strategy which has characterized
the policy of the Government; or perhaps one should rather say, the
Anti-Saloon League, for it is the League, and not the Government, that
is the predominant partner in this matter. For the present, the League
has been "lying low" in the matter of search and seizure; but if it
should ever feel strong enough to undertake the suppression of home
brew, there is not the faintest question but that it will press
forward the most stringent conceivable measures of search and seizure.
Accordingly, there opens up before the eyes of the American people
this pleasing prospect: If the present struggle of the League (or the
Government) with bootleggers and moonshiners and smugglers is brought
to a successful conclusion, there will naturally be a greater resort
than ever to home manufacture; and equally naturally, it will then be
necessary for the League (or the Government) to undertake to stamp out
that practice. But obviously this cannot be done without inaugurating
a sweeping and determined policy of search and seizure in private
houses; a beautiful prospect for "the land of the free," for the
inheritors of the English tradition of individual liberty and of the
American spirit of '76--sight for gods and men to weep over or laugh
at!

CHAPTER VII

NATURE OF THE PROHIBITIONIST TYRANNY

THAT there are some things which, however good they may be in
themselves, the majority has no right to impose upon the minority, is
a doctrine that was, I think I may say, universally understood among